Noisy birth of the Buckman Bridge

For almost four decades, the Buckman Bridge has been both a blessing and a curse for commuters. But there are some who remember when a trip across the St. Johns River from Orange Park meant driving into downtown Jacksonville or south to Green Cove Springs and the rickety Shands Bridge.

When locals first began to hear of the proposed new bridge in the early 1960s, they were ecstatic. But then they learned where it might go and howls of protest rent the air.

The elected officials of Orange Park and residents alike learned of the three possible sites from The Florida Times-Union. One route, which put the westerly end of the bridge down at Creighton Point just south of the U.S. 17 bridge at Doctors Lake, was dropped from the mix early on.

This left the second route, which sliced through the town at Stiles Street, dividing the approximate 3 square miles of Orange Park almost perfectly in half, and the third route, which dropped down in Duval County nestled up against the Clay County line.

Fevers ran high and residents found themselves in a quandary. The community connections of rapidly growing Orange Park were new and fragile. The Stiles Street route threatened to obliterate the town, but veiled threats suggested that opposition to that option might result in no bridge at all.

Orange Park had just spent the past decade dragging itself into the 20th century even though it was half over. The north end of the county was finally growing.

The first public hearing was scheduled in July 1963, but it wasn't until August when more than 200 concerned citizens met in the newly built town hall to hear representatives from the Florida Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Commission. The bridge plan had been reclassified as part of the federal interstate system and as a leg of Interstate 295. The meeting adjourned with no decision and with no bloodshed - but there was a fist fight in the parking lot.

Eight months later, in April 1964, the decision was made to locate the Buckman Bridge, named for Henry Holland Buckman, in Duval County just north of the Clay County line.

Construction commenced, but not too long after came to a screeching halt when poured pilings began to explode. It seems that methane gas produced by anaerobic bacteria in the brackish St. Johns River water caused the fireworks. Engineers went back to the drawing board and construction began anew.

The bridge opened to traffic in 1970. By the mid-1990s, the structure was so congested that it was expanded to eight lanes from the original four and breakdown lanes were added.

Today, traffic can still be annoying on the bridge, but many remember the two-lane parking lot on U.S. 17 that regularly stretched from the gates at Jacksonville Naval Air Station to Timuquana Road in the afternoons. And some recall with a shudder trips across the Shands Bridge with the boards bouncing out of their nails as cars clattered along.

Hard to know what the lesson is here. Be careful what you wish for. Or perhaps, "If you build it, they will come - and come and come."

Because of budget cutbacks, this is the last My Clay Sun column from Clay County resident Mary Jo McTammany. We will miss her knowledge, perspective and humor, and wish her well.